Evenings without echoes
by shelter
Summary: Claymore story project #2. Post-series. Ten short stories on the lives of the Claymores written around the theme of moving on, loving and dying in the long peace after the fall of the Organisation. Updated 14/09/16 with 'Humanity', a story about Dietrich.
1. After the rain

**EVENINGS WITHOUT ECHOES**

Claymore Short Story Project #2

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 _It's been almost seven years since I've written a short story collection of any kind. After Claymore ended, I couldn't resist attempting to tie up some loose ends and to elaborate on some of the less popular characters. So I'm writing this second project, looking at the lives of the characters in Claymore post-series,_ _to ease my writing itch, and hopefully to get enough momentum to complete the other Claymore fics I've left hanging. (A similar collection exists on A03, but I plan the stories to be different)_

 ** _This project is dedicated to all Claymore writers, especially those 'refugees' from the original Animesuki forum and Mangahelpers forums who helped me long ago to polish up my work._**

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* * *

 **Disclaimer:** Claymore belongs to Norihiro Yagi and his affliates

 **Rating:** T/M (some implied sex, language, disturbing imagery)

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 **1**

 **After the rain**

 _A story about Cynthia_

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 **.**

After the end of the war, the warriors claimed nothing short of victory. The Organisation was gone. Most of the Awakened Ones, their enemies, were pacified or dead. Yoma still roamed the land, but the warriors were confident that it would only take several decades to completely wipe them out.

So their leaders encouraged them to settle down. They asked the warriors to keep their blades and live out their lives among the humans. Do not make war with your sisters or the humans who we have sworn to protect, Miria told them. You're no longer tools, but free souls. Free to live. Free to love.

In the course of time, many warriors settled in the towns surrounding Rabona. They saw it as their duty to remain with and help the humans, a responsibility unaffected by the Organisation's demise. They watched over villages, built cities and cleansed the land of yoma. Others took husbands, adopted orphans and built families.

When it was time to choose, Cynthia decided to live among the humans. She had served Miria and fought the yoma and untamed Awakened Ones near the Centrals Lands for a year after the fall of Organisation. She wanted rest, no more fighting.

A warrior of her reputation and stature could take her pick from the men of Rabona's elite, and could command the highest dowry. But when all her suitors had paraded before her, she chose as her husband a cattle merchant who kept land near the border with Lautrec in the west. He did not live in Rabona. Neither was he a warrior or rich. He wasn't even native to the Central Lands.

His dowry to her included half of his grazing lands – fertile, lush lands near the Doga valley, ten days' ride from Rabona – and five thousand heads of cattle.

When Cynthia left Rabona after being betrothed, she rode a white colt that no man had ever ridden before. Her husband's people placed a wreath of lilac on her head. They spread carpets all the way to east gate of the city, throwing aromatic herbs on them. Her sisters who still remained in the city lined the route and saluted her, many of them weeping.

At the east gate, Miria waited for her, wanting to be the last to say goodbye. They held each other for a long time before Miria broke the embrace.

"Be safe. Don't forget us" was all Miria said.

* * *

Out in the Doga valley, Cynthia traded her armour for sheepskin; her uniform and boots for leather and sandals; her life of fighting beasts for tending sheep, cows and horses. Out for long days in the sun-burnt landscape, her skin took on the same burnished walnut colour as her husband's people. The only thing that didn't change was her Claymore: she kept it strapped permanently on her back, both a scar and trophy distinguishing her from others in the grazing lands.

In the day she led her husband's herds down to the valley floor to feed on glacier-watered pasture. In the night she watched over man and beast from the valley outcrops. When she did sleep, she did so under the glow of a multitude of stars.

Then one day her husband said to her, "My people will be gathering to choose a new leader for our tribe. Would you accompany me to my homeland?"

* * *

They departed on horseback with enough provisions for 10 days. But their trip took almost two weeks.

The rode out the valleys until snow-ringed mountains rose like wings all around them, blocking the setting sun. Behind them laid a hundred smaller valleys, many with villages isolated by the hills. There was Doga, the town that gave the entire valley its name, where Clare had met Raki. Then there was the mound where Clare's friend Elena was buried, lost in sliding panes of low-lying clouds.

The air thinned. Their breaths began to smoke. They slept in shallow caves along mountain passes, and boiled snow for water. Their road disappeared behind banks of fog. Lightning strobed the mountain tops at night.

Then, the land began to descend. They found themselves confronted by featureless plains, dissected by great flowing rivers, interrupted by fists of rock.

They met the first of her husband's people at a herder's camp by a snowmelt-still lake. They all carried the same sun-burnt visage of angular peaks and valleys in their faces, and talked in a deep-pitched, wispy language. She nodded to them. They touched fingers to their forehead in return.

When heat from the sun began to cusp at her eyelids, they reached another camp, this time with a cluster of small houses encircled by a low fence pockmarked with bones and animal heads. Hundreds of horses grazed in the bare fields. Men loitered outside the camp's cattle gate. Women drifted in and out with firewood.

"We're home," her husband told her.

* * *

The men lit a fire in the centre of camp. Their bodies consumed every available space around it, displacing women and children. At dusk, the fire threw their long shadows in every direction. The men talked. Women and children edged in at the margins, but none broke through the immediate circle around the fire.

Cynthia observed all this from outside the camp, beside her horse. Her husband had left her and joined the tight congregation of fire-facing men. So, not wanting to feel out of place, she did what the other women did: she looked for firewood.

On her fourth trip returning from the dark, one of the women tugged at her sleeve. She gestured at Cynthia to dump her sticks. She spoke to her in language at Cynthia was still trying to understand, her tongue cleaving her lips in an attempt to communicate.

Cynthia followed the woman past the houses and into a far corner of the camp. There, a group of women were butchering cattle. They were laughing, talking in wild sing-song voices. When they saw Cynthia, they opened their circle to include her. Cynthia held her breath: the scene parted to show women gutting and tearing through several prone carcasses, meat and bones like piers on a flood of blood and guts.

Some women pointed at her Claymore. Others made motions of chopping. They pointed at a sheaf of crimson muscle at the delta of the animal's sawn-open stomach.

She followed their prodding. She seized the meat, dislodged with a blade and nestled it with palm of her hand. The women pointed to their mouths. So she put it to her lips and swallowed it in a single bloody gulp.

She'd tasted worst. In her days in the mountains near Pieta, she had scavenged frozen animal remains and bit bark off saplings. So this was just – big. And fleshy. She felt the warmth of excess blood edge down the sides of her mouth. The moment she opened them to gasp for air, the women began to shriek and howl.

They began to lift her arms. A woman with her mouth smeared with offal and blood kissed Cynthia on her mouth, transferring some of the meat from tongue to tongue.

At the point, Cynthia felt the first raindrops hit her forehead.

* * *

Even in the drizzle, everyone assembled in the open. The women returned to the carcasses. The men were now sparring with the swords.

Or dancing. Cynthia couldn't tell. It looked too elaborate to be actual duelling: men with their swords perpendicular to their arms, facing each other, circling their opponents, and finally simultaneously moving in for a strike.

She watched them duel. No blood was shed, no one beyond a few young men exerted any force. Some duelled, bowed and returned to form a half-crescent of men standing by the fire with their swords sheathed. Her husband whirled among them. Cynthia saw his footwork more than his technique, so elaborate and artistic it felt out of place for a man who rode on his horse all day.

Then, one of the younger men called her to fight.

Much later, when reflecting back on what happened, she would admit the whole thing was more instinctive than a conscious attempt to fight. But there, in the rainy windswept plains, blood edging from her teeth, among a people whose customs she couldn't yet understand, a challenge was a challenge. Just like Miria's orders or Helen taunting her to spar. So she took out her sword.

It took three moves to understand the elaborate dance these men did. Soon, she fought in step, her Claymore matching their powerful parrying blows. The men were not intimated. They didn't soften their strikes.

So Cynthia decided: I'm not holding back.

Anticipating the next blow, Cynthia absorbed the force of the hit. Then, with a single swipe she disarmed her opponent. It just took a bit more force, the most minute injection of strength. Their swords were sharp-edged and curled, but they could not match a Claymore for brute force.

The young man stepped aside. Another took his place.

She repeated this process with three others. Two moves to understand how well her opponent danced or struck, and just one downward slap of the Claymore to pry the sword from their hands.

Then, there was just three.

She stared at the others in the declining circle: her husband, a grizzled young warrior with battered chain mail and herself. She could see tusks of warm air curling from her nose as she sized her opponents up. In between them, the fire whipped left and right with the wind and rain, freed from its confines by the spread-out spectators.

"Cynthia," her husband called.

The young warrior went for him. Now, the moves seemed less of a dance than a jittery mix of parleys, swipes and sheath blocks. She watched the warrior beat down her husband, a cattle herder from the plains beyond the mountains who previously only held a blade to skin animals. She watched until the rain began to hammer her head in icy spikes.

In a move that would make Miria proud, she strode through the fire, blocked the disarming blow and knocked the warrior to the ground with the hilt of the Claymore. A punch. An attempt to sweep out her feet. A desperate lunge for the fallen blade. And Cynthia levelled her sword at him, the other arm keeping her husband away.

They stood like that in the rain for a moment. Until the warrior walked away. She held her guard, rain pouring from her Claymore in rivulets.

She knew everyone was waiting for her next move. So she stabbed her Claymore into the ground, turned to her husband and helped him stand. As the rain continued to pour, she took him in her arms, foreheads touching, watching the raindrops collecting in his eyelashes.

* * *

After the rain, after the gathering, after her husband's people had chosen their leader, Cynthia made preparations for the long journey home. She bartered their leather for provisions and dried their coats in the short hours of blinding daylight.

Before they left, the women who had fed her the horse's insides came up to her. They asked her to dismount and they took turns kissing her hands and feet. She tried to pull away, but they blocked her horse and surrounded her.

When they rode away from the camp, it was her husband's turn to do what the women did. He kissed her left cheek, touched her lips. He smiled. Cynthia, still unsure what to say or do with his intimacy, returned it.

And this was how they headed home: her human husband by her side, her Claymore on her back and all the land of her tribe unfolding before her like an offering.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

 _In many Eastern cultures (especially in imperial China), the bride is sent away from her family and marries into her husband's family. She's expected to assimilate to his culture and adapt accordingly. Examples include the Heqin (peace marriages), where the Chinese royal family married off their branch members to neighbouring nations for peace. Their stories are sad, and they're frequently viewed as helpless victims of politics._

 _But there are stories where the bride in a foreign land stands tall: she rises above her circumstances and leads her new people. This was the trigger for this story, where a headstrong Cynthia, being who she is, takes control and leads._

 _Comments welcome._

 _17/06/2016_


	2. Humanity

**EVENINGS WITHOUT ECHOES**

Claymore Short Story Project #2

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 _ **Disclaimer:** Claymore belongs to Norihiro Yagi  & his associates. _

_**Rating:** T (implied sex) _

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**2**

 **Humanity**

 _A story about Dietrich_

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Dietrich wakes up alone without her clothes in another person's bed. She doesn't remember how she ended up here. The sheets are a wreck of dirt and sweat. Her breath stinks of wine.

This isn't the first time this has happened, and she knows it won't be last.

Blinking away fatigue, her pulse echoes in her temple. All she can remember are the orders from Sister Latea: she had been tracking a lone-wolf yoma south of the farming communities at Musha. She knows she went to a tavern and had a drinking game with the locals – everything else after that recedes into an uncorked bottle of wine.

She thinks, did I really drink that much? Perhaps besting everyone, except Sister Latea, at downing alcohol still wasn't enough to compete with the men of the Musha region.

In a strobe of sunlight coming down from an open window, she sees her sheathed Claymore propped up like a sentry in the corner of the room, beside the door. Outside the window she hears livestock: cow moaning, the chatter of poultry, and the steps of horses.

She gets up, finds women's clothes by the bed. Long chaste sleeves, frayed linen dress falling to the ankles – they're not hers, but she puts them on anyway. She does her hair into her two ponytails, retrieves her Claymore and, head still throbbing, opens the door.

* * *

She enters a stable, or what looks like it. Ambivalent cattle in the corner, a pot simmering in the centre and a boy – or, a young man – adding chunks of meat to it.

"Good morning, Miss," he says.

"Peace be to you," she says. "Where am I?"

"Didn't my father tell you when he brought you back last night?"

Dietrich tries to remember, but the effects of wine clench her head. His father? A man? She remembers at least five men from last night, and at least one woman, and toasts, wine and –

None of them seemed that old.

She blinks again. "Where is he?"

"Who?"

"Your father."

The young man shrugs, returns to his mechanical tear-and-drop action. She sees his hands are slippery with the dead animal's blood.

Only when she moves towards the door does he react.

"I would not go out there, if I were you," he says.

"Why?" she almost raises her arms to her Claymore. She doesn't want to seem ready to fight. So she tries reasoning: "I'm supposed to be tracking yoma."

He laughs. Or tries to.

"I can guess that. But you should stay inside first. Rest. Have some food."

She wonders how she ended up here, with a young man stirring the mud-coloured soupy sludge tinged with a stream of red. Ash flickers from the fire and dusts his face. When he's done, she collects some of the meat – still red and watery – and dumps some on a plate. Her head hurts and, not knowing what else to do, Dietrich accepts

Blood fills the gaps between her teeth as she takes her first bite. The soup tastes like stale rainwater. But when she sees the young man swallowing chunks direct from the pot, she decides to finish her portion.

"You're from Rabona, aren't you Miss?"

"We are based there."

"We?"

"The warriors who keep the peace."

"The lady knights who kill monsters?"

"Yes."

"No yoma here."

"Nice of you not to call me a silver-eyed witch."

"Witches kill children, bring bad luck and ruin families."

"Uh huh."

"No yoma here, Miss. Haven't been any for years."

As they sit across each other eating, she hears noises from outside: a woman's loud wail, followed by echoing voices and a thump on the side of the house. The commotion causes her to start, spilling a dollop of soup on the lap of her dress. Her head beats in pain as the thump returns again and again.

"What was that?"

The young man scrapes the bottom of the pot. Somebody shouts, and then a fist hammers the door. Then there's a woman's voice again, much louder this time.

"I should see what's outside."

"There's no yoma outside."

"I just want to get to the source of this commotion."

The young man looks up. "I think you are the source."

* * *

She opens the door. Light cuts into her vision. It blinds her for a moment, amplifying the ache in her temples. When things stabilise, she sees how beautiful the land is. Faded gold fields stretch as far as she can see, interrupted by strips of green trees in windbreaks. A black spray of slow-moving cattle perch on the horizon. Mathematically straight squares of crops dissect hills. A man on a teal horse watches her from the nearest tree, his eyes a deep wash of blue.

On her left, a woman restrains another hysterical woman, who screams at her:

"You witch! You whore! You piece of filth!"

Dietrich looks back the door she just came through. There, the young man stands. He's either waiting for instructions or obstructing her way back in. Traces of meat hang on his lower lip. He crosses his arms and shrugs.

"You think because you got a sword I'm afraid of you ?"

"I don't understand –"

The woman breaks free of her companion. In two steps she covers the distance between her and Dietrich and punches her in the face.

Dietrich feels the hard bone of the knuckle hit the upper row of her teeth. She falls, pain blooming in her mouth.

"Just because you kill yoma doesn't mean you can take our men!"

Feet clutter the dusty ground. A crowd gathers. But no one intervenes. Dietrich tries to get up. Then a fat toad of spittle hits her in the eye. Followed by a kick to the chest.

"Screaming like an animal with my husband in my wedding bed! And you dare to wear my clothes!"

Dietrich blinks to regain her composure.

"Aren't we poor enough for you already, witch?"

When she finally manages to get to her feet, Dietrich realises the woman has drawn a shearing knife. As the crowd yells, the woman takes a swipe and another. Dietrich dodges one, two – but misjudges the third –

"Enough!"

"Stop it!"

"She brought dishonour on my family!"

"She's from Rabona! She'll bring an army down on us!"

"The hell with Rabona!"

When the sharp pain from the cut finally goes, Dietrich moves fast enough to disarm her attacker. She seizes the open blade and chucks it away. The assembled crowd falls into hush, as she catches the woman's arm.

The woman tenses, muscles tightening. Dietrich knows that she could snap it in a moment, to repay her for the wound in her ribs.

Instead Dietrich takes a deep breath, releases her and walks away.

When someone begins tossing stones, she runs as fast as the dress allows.

* * *

She runs until she's breathless, walks until the pain returns. She stops until she can breathe without pain. Then she doubles back.

As she trudges, she thinks this is the kind of situation Sister Latea warned her about. A messy mix of her own judgement and the nature of the humans she's supposed to protect screwing up things.

"Humans are not a means to an end," Sister Latea would say, pausing with the patient reservation of someone who's been around humans for years.

"But?"

"They're transactional. Thinking only of what they can get out of something."

Sister Latea's words roll over her conscious thought. She thinks of her now, the statuesque glare of her non-eyes, like a perfectly still pool, framed by the dark boundary of her veil. She can still feel the unnatural sensation of her Sister Latea's pale, scrubbed out pupils monitoring her every move.

"With humans, everything's about giving and taking," she would say, "To be among them, you learnt to play their games."

"So why the hell are we doing this then?"

"Our duties don't change." Sister Latea would sigh and turn away "They don't pay us. We don't charge them. With the Organisation gone, they're no longer clients.

"We take guardianship of them. Because we're stronger. Remember that."

She didn't think she needed Sister Latea to teach her how to live her post-Organisation life. But she couldn't imagine bleeding from a human-inflicted wound, along a featureless plain, far from Rabona.

Here, all the farms look the same. Lone houses squat on the crests of repetitive hills, the swaying stalks of maize and barley mingling with the too-blue sky. But she remembers the windbreak, a swell of green against the gold. She heads to it.

Dietrich is within sight of the house when she collapses into a shallow irrigation ditch, pain slicing through her senses. She lies half-submerged in the cloudy green water before she finds enough strength to throw her Claymore on dry land. Gingerly, she crawls out to the closest tree.

Beyond the cover of the windbreak, the house sits on a low rise, looking deserted. The man with the horse and the loitering cattle are gone. A thin ribbon of smoke slips from the ruined chimney. That boy must be boiling his soup again, she thinks.

But she has a problem: she's still bleeding. She tears the dress at the wound, looks at the cut. An incision, not deep, but hurting like hell. Maybe a punctured rib or a torn vessel. In this heat, the wound will turn septic. The pain is like another stab wound, falling deep into her body.

Yes, she knows, she could heal herself. But she's exhausted and might take some time – if she doesn't go into shock first.

Dietrich tries to laugh. Such waste, she thinks, to survive the fall of the Organisation, the great hunts and the founding of a city-state only to die from a human's blunt dagger in a field far from home. All because she decided to sleep with one of them. Sister Latea would definitely be amused.

"I'm not dying here," she says aloud.

She moves her hands over the wound, channels her yoki. She hasn't needed to do this for years and hopes it won't attract that yoma she's supposed to be tracking. She feels yoki tickling her fingers. Pain flares. The humidity is wet against her face. It gets harder to keep her thoughts focused.

She tries for a third time. An explosion of agony. And the trees and fields turn into dark fog.

* * *

"So you're still here."

Dietrich wakes to a warm shadow blocking her view. As her vision clears, she sees it's the young man from the house.

"You again?"

"I knew something was causing the cattle to start."

She rubs her eyes and tries to sit up, but fails. The smarting wound at her ribs still hurts.

"That looks bad," the young man says. "Wait here."

The young man disappears into the trees. The only clue that tells her she's been out for long is the failing light. Sunset turns the sky the colour of infected flesh.

She blinks hard to stay awake. A grazing cow comes up from behind her and pokes its nose into her cheek.

"Go away," she says.

The cow startles as the young man returns. He's carrying different bundles that she can't really make out. The first thing he does is to dump a bucket of water on her.

"Hey!"

"You smell worse than livestock," he says.

She parts her wet hair and wipes water from her eyes. As she does so, she feels the young man's arms like bars underneath her armpits. She allows him to move her, propping her up against the trunk of a tree.

She watches him return to his bundles, where he produces a pot of something steaming. He deposits it into her hands and tells her to eat.

It's the same food from the morning. But it tastes better: the meat is less bloody and there are rocky chunks of dried vegetables in it. She eats. The dense gravy of dubious meat and stew courses down her throat, a warm slug falling into her stomach.

While she eats, he dresses the wound. She finds his fingers surprisingly careful and cautious for someone who had no other motion save tearing meat apart.

He picks fragments of dirt from the wound and causterises it with a hot paste that she thinks looks like what she just ate.

She bites her lips as her vision spins.

"Sorry. I forgot to tell you about that."

She waves away his apology. She shuts her eyes to keep back tears of pain as he lathers the boiling paste on the wound and coats it with a blanket of ash. Even in pain, she feels touched by this young man's delicate method.

"Why are you helping me?" she asks.

"You're on family land."

"So?"

"You're a stranger on my land. You're entitled to our hospitality."

"Your mother stabbed me."

"That's her. Not me."

Humans and their mysterious traditions and practices, Dietrich thinks. Can't live without them.

"How is your mother?"

"She'll survive."

"And your father?"

"Are you planning on seducing him again?"

"You give me too much credit."

"He told us you started everything."

"I'm no harlot."

"I know."

"You do?"

"My family's full of liars."

"Oh?"

"Not the first time this has happened."

"Right."

"Just the first time with a silver-eyed warrior."

The young man shrugs. Dietrich finishes the pot of stew. She's given up on trying to understand these humans and their complicated relationships.

When she's done, he gives her something to drink, says it will help her recover. It's bitter and has brown leaves it in, but she finishes it anyway.

"People say silver-eyed warriors can heal themselves even when they're dying. Is it true?"

"Most of the time."

"Most of the time?"

"If the injury isn't fatal and if the warrior's strong enough."

"Oh."

With food in her stomach, she pulls herself up to sit. The sun has fallen below the hills. In the last light, the young man turns into a indistinct shadow against the landscape.

"I hope you're not in trouble for helping me."

"I can look after myself."

"Of course."

"What about you?"

"I'll live."

"And then?"

"I'll get out of here. Find the yoma I'm tracking."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"Nothing for me to remember you by?"

"How about a 'thank you'?"

"That's it?"

It's already so dark that she can't see him. But she can sense him standing close, the warmth of his body burning from him in waves. The house has a fire going, a shock of white light.

When he steps closer, Dietrich knows where this is going and what he wants. She could refuse, or take her sword and defend herself. The thought of him taking advantage of her injury sickens her. She knows there are considerations: his help, the trouble she's caused to his household, her injury, and what Sister Latea told her about respecting humans.

She thinks of these things - interactions and favours and acts and deeds, the give and take that connects her and her kind to humankind.

Thinking like a human already, she thinks. Was this what she thought of last night that led to this mess?

Without disturbing her wound, she undresses.

"This what you wanted?"

"I can't see anything."

"I'm here."

In the blackness, she guides him with her voice and touch.

She looks above at the crystalline stars, thinking about the tenderness of his fingers.

* * *

Dietrich wakes alone without her clothes on a bed of grass on the opposite side of the treeline. A sheen of dew and sweat swabs her body. Her dress is gone. Her wound bubbles with pain as she tries to stand.

Dawn threatens to ignite the edges of the sky, the horizon is already bruised blue at its edges. The dark shapes of cattle dot the fields. The fire from the house has died. The morning is completely still.

She finds her Claymore by the roots of a tree. A frayed linen cloak lies beside it.

She thinks of the young man, stealing away in the night with his mother's dress and leaving her this shapeless thing. She isn't sure of these humans, isn't sure how to read them, or to trust them as much as she would like to. She doesn't know what to think. If Sister Latea could see me now, she thinks.

But she abandons that. She's wasted enough time. She still has a rogue yoma to track.

Before dawn throws sunlight on everything, she dons the cloak and Claymore. She disappears into the closing shadows, leaving her humans behind.

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 ** _END_**

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NOTES:

 _This story came from a stray idea about the loneliest warrior of the surviving generations. However, what you've read has been edited and revised so many times that it bears no resemblance to the original idea. I apologise in advance if the story & my portrayal of Dietrich is overly exploitative. _

_If all goes well, the next story should be about Raftela._

 _Thanks for reading! Comments & critique welcome. _


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